Make Spaghetti With Ramps Right Now

Every Monday night, Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport gives us a peek inside his brain by taking over our newsletter. He shares recipes he's been cooking, restaurants he's been eating at, and more. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.

There are two things on repeat this week in the RapoBuck household: One is the Billy Ray Cyrus remix of “Old Town Road” (thanks to our 11-year-old son), and the other is ramps.

I can’t quit either.

With ramps, though, I at least can offer a bit of insight and advice. To start, if you see some, buy some. They’re hard to miss. With their floppy green leaves and white-to-purple stems, they pile up at farmers’ markets and better grocers this time of year. And, as you know, food-media types like me can’t help but go on and on about them.

Intoxicatingly fragrant, they’re technically wild leeks. But I like to think of them as the working man’s white truffle. They’re much more accessible and affordable, but like truffles, the less you do with them, the better.

You can’t go wrong with ramp pasta. You basically just sauté the bulbs and then the leaves in a combo of butter and olive oil; hit them with a splash of starchy, salty pasta water to create a saucy emulsion; and then finish the mixture with a blizzard of finely grated parm.

And, if you’re smart like Alison Roman, you top off your limited-engagement springtime pasta with a shaving of lemon zest, to help cut through all that butter and cheese. I regretfully neglected this crowning step Saturday night, but I did top the pasta with a flourish of crunchy homemade breadcrumbs, because carbs plus carbs always equals awesome.

Danny Kim

You can do all sorts of other things with ramps—like pickle them and deep fry them and pesto them and pair them with softly scrambled eggs, which I’ll probably do because I love scrambled eggs. But mostly, like singing loudly along to “Old Town Road” over and over and over again, I’ll just make a lot of ramp pasta. The latter of which, at least, I know won’t make my 11-year-old cringe.